Because of the popularity of various sports, particularly in the United States, many people enjoy sports either as a participant or as a spectator. Unfortunately, most sports are played outdoors on large playing fields or at large indoor facilities. Thus, most people are unable to practice certain sports skills or enjoy participation in certain sports within the home.
Heretofore, the ability to take aspects of many sports games indoors has been impractical and space prohibitive for most families. It is not practical to construct a court or a playing field within a home because of the size of such courts or playing fields. Most homes do not have the unobstructed floor space needed for a court or playing field.
Due to the popularity of sports games and the skill involved to play such games well, games derivative from sports such as basketball, football, baseball and softball have developed. Games to test a player's basketball shooting or ball tossing skills are among the most popular at amusement parks, carnivals, and fairs. Typically, a player is given a certain number of shots or throws to score a predetermined number of baskets or hit a target in order to win a prize. Usually an attendant is present to administer the game and distribute the prizes. Such games are usually outdoors, large, and not intended to be readily mobile.
In more recent years, there has been a trend to scale down the size of such sports games so that the game could move indoors into arcades. Such arcade games are typically coin-operated and permit the player a designated period of time to score as many baskets or hit as many targets as possible. Prizes or additional playing time may be awarded to the particularly skillful player who scores a predetermined number of baskets or points within the time period allowed. Such arcade games have become very popular, finding their way into bars, pizza parlors and other places of amusement and entertainment.
Although arcade games of this type have been used in homes, generally such arcade sports games are not found within a home. This is because, heretofore, such arcade-style game devices were not intended for and do not address the limitations presented by home usage. Most homes have a very limited floor space and relatively low ceilings. The sports arcade games that are known are deployed in a ready-to-play configuration that consumes valuable floor space. If a person wishes to reduce the amount of floor space used by the apparatus of the game, virtual disassembly is required.
One known arcade basketball shooting game apparatus has uprights which are capable of folding to a horizontal position, this reduces the height of the game to floor level, but does not address the amount of floor space used. Once folded down into a horizontal position, the apparatus can be leaned against a wall to reduce the amount of floor space used. However, such deployment for storage when not in use is impractical and unsafe. It is a major project to break down the component parts of the game so that the uprights can be folded horizontal, and the project is no less major to unfold the uprights and reposition the components before the device is ready for play. Furthermore, the device when folded down and leaned against a wall for storage is susceptible to tipping over onto children or pets that may jar the device inadvertently.
Heretofore no known device has been adaptable for indoor home usage while still providing an arcade-type game. Hence, it would be an improvement to provide an arcade-type sports game device that is easily foldable for storage and may be rapidly deployed into its ready-to-play configuration.
Additionally, it would be an improvement to provide a foldable arcade-type sports game device which stores in a substantially vertical disposition resting on a stable base, thereby minimizing the amount of floor space occupied when the game is not in use.
It would be a further improvement to provide a foldable arcade-type sports game device which can be transformed rapidly from its vertical storage disposition to its ready-to-play configuration without disassembly of any of its component parts, particularly if such transformation procedure is simple and safe enough to be performed by a child.
Still another improvement would be to provide an arcade-type sports game device which enables head-to-head competition.
Yet another improvement would be to provide an arcade-type sports game device which electronically registers the score and visually displays a running score while simultaneously visually counting down the period of time during which made shots or tosses are counted. Another improvement would be to provide volume-adjustable audible acknowledgement of each basket or throw scored.
A further improvement would be to provide an arcade-type sports game device with a scoring mechanism which reduces extraneous scoring.